Alfred Williams with Darren McKee during their show at 104.3 The Fan on Thursday, June 17, 2010. (John Leyba, The Denver Post)

Entercom has reached a deal to acquire Lincoln Financial Media, both major radio operators in Denver, for $105 million plus working capital.

The sale of 15 stations in four markets including Denver could mean the loss of jobs for dozens of local radio employees although the company insisted no such decisions have been made. “It is too early in the announcement timeline to speculate on any impact or to talk about employees leaving the company,” according to Entercom spokesman Greg Kaufman.

Lincoln Financial Media’s Denver holdings were KYGO, historically one of the most recognized country stations nationally, KQKS, KKFN, KEPN and KRWZ. KYGO-FM, Comedy 103.1, has shown tremendous growth in its first year.

John Oliver on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver which aired on April 27, 2014. (Photo provied by Eric Liebowitz, HBO)

The three best takes I’ve seen on the Federal Communications Commission’s phony “net neutrality” proposal manage to take a dull subject and bureaucratic language and legalese and make it both informative and funny. The simpler the better.

The gist is, the FCC suggests a toll road on the internet with huge corporations like, say Comcast and Time Warner, paying for faster service than the rest of us and controlling the gateway to our access, with contented lobbyists and their political pals looking on.

John Oliver’s 13-minute screed on his Sunday HBO show, “Last Week Tonight,” is a terrific analysis of what’s being suggested: it’s not only about letting big corporations buy their way into a fast lane on the internet, it’s about the rest of us facing slower speeds in a system run by regulators who are former lobbyists for the cable industry.

A chart of Netflix speeds trending ever downward until Netflix made a deal with Comcast to speed things up is instructive. “It has all the earmarks of a mob shakedown,” Oliver says. Internet speed is much faster in Estonia, Oliver observes, and that’s a country that, from the look of it, is still expecting a Shrek attack.” But seriously, in the future, under the misnomer “net neutrality,” the page you want may take longer to load because data-rich advertising video will load first.

Finally, a “Net Neutrality 101 explainer” from InfoWorld uses a pipe metaphor to get across the point that all data should be treated equally. “Not to be overly dramatic here, but preserving data equality may be one of the most important issues in a generation,” the video notes. The simple drawings demonstrate that, while an open internet helps innovators and upstarts, “an internet where middlemen pick and choose what comes through the pipe is an internet of stagnation for all and profit for few.”

Community non-profit radio is within reach for Colorado Springs. The nonprofit Colorado Media Justice Foundation in the Springs applied for a low-power FM radio broadcasting license last Fall. On Feb. 6 the Federal Communications Commission awarded the group a construction permit.

“Media conglomerates own the vast majority of radio stations in our city. The result is a gaping void in truly local voices on the public airwaves,” Dennis Apuan, chair of the Colorado Media Justice Foundation (CMJF) said in a statement. “Our community radio project is bringing local citizens together to counter the bland sameness and conservative bias of the corporate media monopolies, and awaken our community to its exciting, diverse, creative potential.”

Dave Gardner, director of CMJF, said it will take “a good year to do our capital campaign and get the facility built.” A number of people interested in doing programming, some offering music shows. “I want to see us provide some local current affairs talk programming. The only local talk shows we have (in Colorado Springs) are very conservative and don’t even address local issues.”

For anyone concerned about media consolidation, for anyone who worries about the effect of new technology on democracy, for anyone wondering how regular folks can join the political discussion in the age of Citizens United, Denver will be the center of the universe for a few days.

Activists, critics, policymakers and students of media will convene at the downtown Denver Sheraton Hotel April 5-7 for the 2013 National Conference on Media Reform. Mayor Michael Hancock will address the gathering. A slew of speeches and workshops are scheduled on topics like “The Media’s Influence on the Immigration Debate,” “Coverage of Race in the Time of Obama,” “The Media’s Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Problem” and how to start a community radio station.

Among the speakers are Michael Copps, former member of the Federal Communications Commission and an outspoken critic of media consolidation; media scholar Robert McChesney; John Nichols, author and Washington correspondent for The Nation; Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now”; and fellow TV Critic Eric Deggans, author of “Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation.” There are also a lot of local and national media mavens on tap to participate.

If the Federal Communications Commission has its way, Denver and other top-20 markets could see a single owner of local newspaper, television, radio and even internet services in the future. The relaxation of cross-ownership rules currently under consideration by the regulatory agency has been derided by watchdog groups as a big gift from the FCC to Rupert Murdoch. After a quick, closed-door decision was scuttled, a vote has been pushed to 2013.

Currently, the bulk of the media is owned by six companies — CBS, News Corp., Comcast, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom. See a chart from Free Press. Murdoch is angling to buy the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, the biggest newspapers in the country’s second and third largest markets. The media baron already owns TV stations in both cities. Only the FCC’s 1970s-era rules against media cross-ownership stand in his way. And the FCC is talking about dropping those rules.

The FCC’s argument is that the internet makes the old ownership rules obsolete. But as former FCC Chairman Michael Copps has said, the internet is great for bubbling up emotion and political action in instances like the Arab Spring. But the internet is not good at sustained investigative reporting. Strong local journalism is important for a working democracy.

The FCC’s move is opposed by civil rights and public interest groups, who say the Commission is too concerned with protecting corporations, when it should focus on protecting citizens and furthering diversity of media ownership. This editorial by Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and Copps, “FCC Rule Change Would Favor Big Media,” sums it up.

It’s a go for Comcast to takeover NBC Universal, thanks to today’s approval by both the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department, marking the first time a cable company will own a broadcast network. What does it all mean?

First, “30 Rock” and Tina Fey are good to go with storylines for the foreseeable future.

Second, because consumer groups and Comcast are equally discontent with certain parts of the FCC’s ruling, figure that the commission got it mostly right.

George Carlin is smiling down on us. The Parents Television Council feels like it’s been slapped in the face. Hollywood creative types are rejoicing.
And we can all brace for further discussion of televised “fleeting expletives” –likely before the Supreme Court.
The FCC’s expletives policy was ruled unconstitutional by an Appeals Court today, which called it vague and likely to have a chilling effect.

It’s been a long time since Carlin’s famous “seven dirty words” routine, the 1973 Pacifica Radio decision that granted the FCC authority to sanction indecent speech. Nowadays parents have the means to select what appears on their home screens, lock out what they don’t want and generally oversee their kids’ viewing. This decision took modern technology, like the V-chip, into account.

The “fleeting expletives,” like Cher’s and Bono’s, are qualitatively different from the shock value of the Carlin monologue, the court found.

Call it a victory for defenders of the First Amendment. The battle for free speech continues.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.